A piece of raw steel stock typically is not ready to be machined. The sides of the piece of raw steel stock are generally not flat enough nor sufficiently parallel. Therefore, the sides of the piece of raw steel stock are ground down to become flat and parallel within specified tolerances.
Conventional methods of transforming a piece of raw steel stock down to a flat machine-ready piece suffer from many disadvantages. The conventional methods typically include grinding, which uses ceramic and other abrasives. These grinding methods produce too much undesirable environmental waste, including thousands of tons of toxic sludge. Further, conventional methods take too long and are too expensive.